>all forms of knowledge _are_ tainted.
okay, so we agree here. i read you as saying that the work of academics are tainted because of their institutional authority. and that's where i saw the grumpy synchrony: if you do social research and are located in the academy then, as you said, 'the research is going to be tainted by that'.
if I didn't think this was the case,
>then I would think that there was a place outside ideology, which I don't.
>if we think about how to work our way through and against this, then we have
>to think of it not as a separation of spaces (ideology here, non-ideological
>knowledge over there) but that all knowledge and ideology is both brought
>into being because of (to put it in ken's word's) an indigestible remainder,
>and in Marx's words, a surplus (value); and that, in its conservative
>moments, seeks to really try and render this leftover into a manageable piece
>of reality,
you've lost me here. when research tries to manage reality what exactly does that mean?
>which as we know, Marx clearly saw that even the classical
and you've lost me here as to the specifics of what we know marx to have seen?
i was getting at marx's claim that intellectuals' interests shift depending on historical circumstances and that this has consequences for how and if they move with what you've called "the preponderance of the object".
>economists never really could successfully do, even within its preferred
>discursive space, and in its best moments, tries to (as Dennis pointed out)
>move with (or deciphering) the preponderance of the object. this is not
>synchronic, but dialectical (diachronic); certainly not a question of
>being able to be 'not tainted'.
used 'tainted' because you did initially: ">no, insofar as social researchers have institutional authority and disciplinary preoccuaptions, the research is going to be tainted by that."
it woudn't have been my choice of words. so i'm not quite sure what you're getting at. you've pointed to social researchers has having institutional authority and disciplinary preoccupations which taint their research in answer to the question:
> 1. do you think we can do social research at all if social researchers
> generally have more power than those they study? if you do, how should
> that project proceed?
so, you're saying that social researchers shouldn't study folks who have
less power because of their institutional location, which taints their
ability to do this work? or, if they do, then they shouldn't do
ethnography, but use surveys and the like? i guess i wasn't sure what
reference to the rand corporation meant. you said: "does that mean you
shouldn't do it? not at all. even the rand corporation
>can make for useful and important reading, if only to know what the rand corp
>and their ilk are thinking."
so, now, does this mean that ethnography or what have you is useful for revealing the crap that intellectuals pump out which might be a way of moving with the preponderance of the object? that is, academics and researchers at think tanks and the like will pump out work that can tell us about how capitalism works because they're part of 'the preponderance of the object' and that would be useful. but otherwise, ethnography doesn't move with the preponderance of the object and so it can only be useful to those who want to analyze it in terms of revealing the way capitalism works? i took dennis's comment to ken as saying that we can't foget about the operations of capitalism: capitalism has us.
kelley